And The World Spins Madly On
by petrelli heiress
Summary: In which Peter and Elle reflect mournfully on their apparently unrequited love. Peter/Sylar. Elle/Claire.


**And The World Spins Madly On**

**Characters/Pairings: Peter/Sylar, Elle/Claire, implied Matt/Mohinder, Nathan**

**Author's Note: Random. Title taken from a song by The , I wrote this ages ago and only now discovered it again. Hmm. Perhaps written while the internet was on the fritz...  
**

**Summary: In which Peter and Elle reflect mournfully on their apparently unrequited love. Poor, deluded things, they think they're the only ones. How wrong they are.**

**Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING. EXCEPT A STAR TREK POSTER, BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HEROES. And so. **

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Peter and Elle sat in front of the TV, watching reruns of Alias. They were very confused, and seemed to see a few familiar faces. Like now, for instance.

"Doesn't he bear a striking resemblance to Adam?" Peter asked, pointing at the screen.

Elle, incredibly bored and currently cleaning her nails, glanced up at the screen. "I guess so," she said before returning to the task of getting a particularly stubborn piece of dirt from under one fingernail.

Peter sighed, shaking his head, before looking back at the screen. Again he tried to get Elle's attention as yet another familiar face appeared. "Look, Elle!" he shouted, causing Elle to cover her ears and glare at him. He lowered his voice accordingly. "Look! He looks exactly like Matt, doesn't he?"

Elle gave her full attention to the taste at hand, squinted a bit and made a mental note to go see the optometrist; she didn't think she was supposed to be squinting when the TV was so close. She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so."

Peter gave the huge gusty sigh of the eternally frustrated, but decided not to comment further. He was just beginning to get the gist of the episode when Elle finished the nails on her right hand, turned to him and asked, "When do you think Sylar and Claire will be getting home?"

He shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, and glanced at his watch, a present from Sylar for absolutely no reason, because Sylar never gave people presents for a reason (like birthdays, or for Christmas – these times he ignored). "Soon," he said. "It's nearly dinner time."

Elle seemed vaguely interested in this piece of information. "Oh, it is?" she said, taking her time in standing up. She stretched languidly and then made her way over to where the phone was hanging in its cradle. "Better go order some pizza then."

"Yeah," Peter said, eyes returning to the screen. He cursed under his breath as the credits rolled. "You do that." He stretched the length of the sofa and closed his eyes. There was something real peaceful about having nobody but himself to look after. Usually he wasn't very good at it – sometimes it took the combined efforts of Sylar, Claire and Elle to get him to eat something – but today, well, it had gone swimmingly...

...oh, who was he kidding? He'd been bored out of his fucking mind. This always happened when Sylar (and Claire, he admitted grudgingly) left for their Big Top Secret Missions. Elle was an alright companion at the best of times, but when Peter was trying to entertain himself she was either never there or there too much. It wasn't that he didn't like her – he liked her well enough. It was just...he liked a certain someone better.

To distract himself from the absence of this particular person's presence, he thought of all the people he (and they) had saved, the children, the parents, the husbands and wives and partners. Some faces blurred together, those people he had seen only fleetingly before going on his not so merry way. Others were clear in his mind, as though he had only seen them a few seconds ago (certainly not 'only yesterday' – his memory was terrible). They were of those whom he'd known, even if only for a week or two. He thought of the evil they had faced, and the fears they had conquered, saving him while he was in the process of saving them. All of these faces, both blurred and distinct, were the reasons he was still fighting, still going strong.

This type of thinking didn't last long though. It never did. As soon as he started thinking about particular faces, a certain one would appear in his mind's eye. Peter was easily distracted at the best of times (there aren't many things that can capture the attention of an immortal), but Sylar was a distraction he would gladly die to keep, which was kind of oxymoronic but this type of thinking was common when Peter's thoughts turned to Sylar.

Peter was most likely just very bored, and anyway Sylar didn't think of him like that. Or so he told himself. Frequently, with varying degrees of success. Mostly, he was okay when Sylar wasn't there. His thoughts continuously turned to him, but he could easily disguise this, and telepaths were so rare nowadays all he had to worry about was Matt eavesdropping on his thoughts in order to catch up on the conversation (seeing as he was very deaf). However when Sylar was there, all bets were off. It became increasingly obvious (especially to people like, oh, say, Sylar) that something was very off with Peter. Nothing was safe around him; he was always tripping over, knocking into, pushing over and generally making a mess of things. Yes, Peter was susceptible to random and often quite dangerous bouts of clumsiness.

Take for instance, only last week. Peter had been walking down the street with Sylar, as they did sometimes, when, due to the closeness of the crowd they were walking through, Sylar brushed up against him. Peter immediately slipped on a banana peel, crashed into a garbage can, pushed two passersby into the middle of the road, and it was only with a bit of quick thinking from Sylar that the little old lady and her grandson weren't bowled over by oncoming traffic.

Ever since then, Peter couldn't look at a banana without feeling sick.

In any case, despite the fact that he had made a concerted effort to _not _think about Sylar, his thoughts immediately and without fail turned in that direction, because that was just the way his brain worked. He guessed it was a little like that whole pink elephant thing.

He thought about Sylar's hair, and how much he wanted to run his fingers through it, The warmth in his brown eyes, and the sudden coldness. His fondness for truly hopeless lost causes, and the way he would stick to them with unfailing dedication. Even the way he didn't care about the destruction he left in his wake, totally focused on the causes, never once giving a thought to the wives and mothers of men he strangled information from. Peter cleaned up the messes, mostly because he liked talking to people, even if the conversation mostly focused on how much the other person hated Sylar.

And afterwards he would take Sylar aside and yell at him, because it made him feel better, maybe like he was accomplishing something. Sylar would pretend to look apologetic, but they both knew he wasn't, and that he would do the exact same thing next time. They had a pattern, and Sylar was nothing if not heartbreakingly predictable. Not that he would ever mention this predictability out loud since, although Sylar was somewhat reformed, he wasn't totally. He still killed people, but instead of killing being the means to the end of possessing every ability he could get his hands on, it was instead the goal of furthering specific causes, where a former serial killer might come in handy.

Having a purpose was nice, Peter thought. Having a purpose that meant he had to share a bedroom, and an apartment, with Sylar was even better. He grinned, and then something blunt poked him in the forehead. His grin turned into a frown and he opened his eyes, looking up into Elle's amused face.

"Hey, sleepyhead," she said, waving the phone around. "Claire just called. They'll be home in half an hour."

"Oh." Peter sat up slowly. "That's great."

As they were setting the table, in preparation of Sylar and Claire's return, Elle looked over at him and said, "You know how you're totally in love with Sylar?"

Peter spluttered, outraged. "I am not!" he said, lying through his teeth. He felt himself beginning to panic and tried to calm himself down, by thinking happy thoughts about rainbows and the song Hakuna Matata. Trying to sound as collected as possible, he asked, "Who told you such a blatant lie, anyway?"

Elle shook her head, completely aware that he was lying. "No one had to tell me, Peter. It's very obvious."

Peter looked stricken. "You don't think anyone else knows, do you?"

"I think everyone knows." She thought about that for a moment. "Mohinder might have been a bit clueless, but Matt's sure to have filled him in."

He slumped into the nearest chair and buried his head in his head. "Great. That's just great."

"Cool," she said, trying to get back to the reason she'd asked in the first place. "Anyway, so you know how you're totally in love with Sylar? Well, I'm...kind of that way with Claire."

"Oh, _that_," Peter said instantly, waving a hand dismissively. "Everyone knows _that_."

It was Elle's turn to look stricken. She pulled it off rather well. "Including Claire?"

Peter had to think about that for a moment. Claire wasn't very easy to read at the best of times, but everyone had definitely noticed the way she looked at Elle sometimes. There was a hunger in her eyes, mixed with a nice dollop of wistfulness, as though she knew she wouldn't be getting what she wanted any time soon.

"No," he said, giving a little sigh in sympathy. "She doesn't. What was the point of telling me that anyway?"

Elle shrugged, awkward. "I thought maybe we could help each other. You know, somehow figure out a way for them to notice us."

Peter hesitated before he said the first thing that had popped into his head. "We could...make them jealous," he said, and was immediately grateful when Elle wrinkled her nose. He felt free enough to wrinkle his own and add, "Yeah, didn't think so."

"Maybe we could get Nathan to fly over the city, carrying a huge banner," Elle suggested, and Peter could tell she had thought of that one before even broaching the subject.

"Saying what?" Peter was very sceptical of this plan, mostly because his brother was getting on in years and had the tendency to crash into very obvious buildings.

Elle shrugged. "I don't know. We love you?" Another shrug. "We're totally gay for you, please fuck us?" Peter snorted, and she glared at him. "Okay, what about, like, We're totally gay for you, please let us fuck you?"

"I'm just going to ignore you said that," he said, trying not to laugh (although all three proposed banners were remarkably close to the truth). "Any other ideas?"

"Fresh out of them, I'm afraid." Elle leaned back in her chair and gave him a mocking salute. "If you're so clever, you think of one."

"Okay, um." A very deep, steadying breath. "Why don't we just tell them?" he said, quietly.

"Tell us what?"

Elle and Peter both jumped as Claire's voice came from the kitchen doorway. They glanced over and saw that she and Sylar had arrived home. Apparently it was raining outside because they were both soaked. Peter caught a glimpse of Elle from the corner of his eye; she looked entranced, and there was a bit of drool at the corner of her mouth. He had a bad feeling that he looked exactly the same way.

"Peter," Sylar's deep voice broke through his trance to the somewhat rational human being beneath. "Come with me." He started moving through the kitchen, towards their shared bedroom, but stopped at the door when he realised Peter wasn't following.

"Why?" Peter said, stubbornly and with no good reason, answering the unspoken question in Sylar's eyes. "Why should I come with you?"

Sylar rolled his eyes. "Because I asked you to."

"No, you _told _me to. There is a very distinct difference."

Sylar gave a very put upon sigh. "Fine," he said. "Can you please come with me, Peter? I need to talk to you about something."

Peter immediately stood up. "Okay."

Sylar ushered him into the bedroom with a very definite flourish, closing the door behind him. Peter, a little dazed from the man's close proximity and the way he smelled after being in the rain, wondered why Sylar needed to speak to him. He received his answer very quickly.

Sylar grabbed him and pulled him into the circle of his arms, wrapping them firmly around his waist. Peter was already breathless with need, his body pressing closer before his mind had even caught up with events happening as quickly as they were. Sylar pressed their mouths together, and Peter responded with unguarded, unchecked and (later he would think this) very embarrassing enthusiasm, with a nice helping of desperation in there, just for the hell of it. And oh, if he was going to hell for this, he needed to get as much of it as he could.

With that in mind, he let his hands grab at Sylar's coat collar, before sliding them down his back and along his spine. He rubbed himself against an ideally located thigh, getting as much friction as he could. He needed, wanted, desired everything, and his hands went forth and tried to fulfil as much of his needs, wants and desire as they possibly could. He was just getting into the swing of things when Sylar pulled away with a sigh.

Peter was left bereft, and felt as though he might fall over, except that he would never allow himself to do something so silly. He took a deep breath to steady himself and realised Sylar was speaking.

"...thought I should just tell you." The hands gripping his waist tightened, pulling at his t-shirt. "I understand if you don't feel the same way, I really do, but I intend to spend the rest of my unnaturally long life trying to change your mind."

Peter stared at him. Although, in hindsight, he shouldn't have been surprised in the least, he was exactly that. Surprised and shocked and, well, gobsmacked. Really. He felt as though someone had just slapped him across the face, it even tingled a little as if it had actually happened.

Sylar was starting to look very uncomfortable, and Peter had to remind himself that talking about your feelings is very difficult when you aren't a girl. That being said, he grabbed onto each side of Sylar's coat and pulled him into a deep, very satisfying kiss.

"Oh," Sylar said when they eventually broke apart, this time with Peter being the first one to pull away. He looked stunned, but pleasantly so, and Peter thought he might actually get lucky tonight (finally).

The doorbell rang.

They both stifled frustrated sighs.

It turned out to not be the pizza delivery guy, as they had thought; instead it was the beginning of a new crisis, possibly even an end of the world one (not to be confused with the End of the World, which was an entirely different crisis altogether). It would be an entire year before either Peter or Sylar were free enough to get lucky. But they did, eventually.

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**Oooh. Yeah, what? Read the next sentence **_**very carefully...**_

**Review please. **


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